Healthcare-related data breaches could not only be expensive, but also life-threatening, experts say, and traditional credit monitoring provides little protection.

“Credit monitoring for a breach of your identity data, medical or not, is like handing out umbrellas in a tornado,” said Alisdair Faulkner, chief products officer at San Jose, Calif.-based ThreatMetrix. “If I’m a criminal, I can either try to apply for a credit card with a limit of a few thousand dollars, or I can use your identity to access or bill for healthcare worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. How long until we see people being bankrupt by procedures they didn’t have, or doctors making the wrong call in a medical emergency due to false medical history?”

According to a 2013 Ponemon study, the most recent available, 1.8 million Americans or their close family members fell victim to medical identity theft, and 36 percent of them faced significant out-of-pocket expenses as a result. For example, some wound up having to pay full price for medical services or medicines because their medical insurance lapsed, or pay for costs incurred by fraudsters. The average cost? $18,660.

But that’s not even the worst thing that could happen.

“If someone gets your medical identity, and uses that to get medical goods, services, prescriptions — everything they do goes on your personal health record,” said Bob Gregg, CEO at Portland, Ore.-based ID Experts, which provides medical identity monitoring services.

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February 9, 2015 by Maria Korolov, CSO Online